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This strand focuses on building positive mental health, examining young people’s experience of mental ill health and learning how to support themselves and others in challenging times.

Personal learning diary

The nature of much of students’ learning in SPHE is concerned with attitudes, values and feelings and is personal to the student. Students should be encouraged to keep a personal learning diary for the duration of the short course, where they can reflect privately on their learning in SPHE. With the agreement of the student, some of the entries may be used to support different learning activities, but essentially the personal learning diary is private and for the student only.

Given the potentially sensitive nature of students’ learning in SPHE, it is essential that students agree a contract with each other and their teacher to ensure that the SPHE classroom is a respectful and safe environment for learning in SPHE.

The Classroom-Based Assessment outlined below reflects the learning students undertake in this NCCA short course. Schools have the flexibility to adapt any NCCA short course to suit their particular needs and school context. If adapting the course, schools may also need to adapt the Classroom-Based Assessment, so that it reflects the learning their students undertook. Schools may also develop their own short course(s) and related Classroom-Based Assessment. Guidelines for schools who wish to develop their own short course(s) are available.

The learning outcomes in this short course are aligned with the level indicators for Level 3 of the National Framework of Qualifications (Appendix 1).

The SPHE short course has been designed for approximately 100 hours of student engagement.